Arrowhead Timeline

Arrowhead Timeline

A game for everyone is a game for no one

In 2017 Arrowhead turned eight years old. In these last eight years we have grown significantly in size, developed four games and worked with three different publishers. Not to mention attended numerous events and conventions, moved premises a number of times and won a few awards along the way…

What a long, strange journey it has been! We want to share with you the details of our journey from the very not-so-glamorous beginning to the present. Hopefully there will be many more exciting things to add to the Arrowhead timeline in the future!

2008 / 2009

Our first game, Magicka 2D, was a student project. After working on it for months we were able to submit it in the Swedish Game Awards. To our amazement it won Game of the Year 2008!

After the win it rapidly gained attention in the Swedish game industry. With the help and encouragement of friends, family and Skellefteå university we decided to pursue our dreams and continue to develop Magicka.

At this point Magicka was being developed from the inside of a kitchen in a student apartment. With the difficulties starting to mount up between balancing full-time studies and developing a game, five of us decided to quit university.

All of our time was dedicated to developing Magicka on a full-time basis and we moved into a borrowed room on campus. In the beginning of 2009 we realized we needed to be a company and Arrowhead Game Studios was subsequently founded!

Soon after two more people joined the team to help us develop the game. With the new additions it soon became clear that the room on campus was not big enough. Once again we moved into an even bigger room on campus.

2010 / 2011

Between 2009 and 2010 the whole team worked hard on the game while surviving on spaghetti and meatballs. The hard work paid off when Paradox Interactive became our publishers.

It was exciting to finally get Magicka signed and we started to enjoy a few of the perks of being proper game developers. We attended our first ever Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco!

At some point the vacation had to end and the rest of the year was spent tirelessly working on Magicka before the release in January 2011.

In January 2011 Magicka was launched. There were a few bugs, but overall the game was very well received with great reviews. We celebrated with a release party in New York leaving very fond memories.

With the surprise success of Magicka, Arrowhead was able to employ a couple more people at the end of the year. We moved rooms on campus again to accommodate the extras, with a total of 12 employees.

Paradox Interactive became the publishers of The Showdown Effect.

2012 / 2013

The biggest room on campus in Skellefteå was no longer suitable. In 2012 Arrowhead took the decision to move its offices to Stockholm. For a while Arrowhead operated from both locations while the new offices were being set up and employees moved.

Once in Stockholm Arrowhead began to employ even more people ready for The Showdown Effect launch.

2013 was an extremely hectic year. Not only did we release The Showdown Effect, but we acquired two publishers! Sony became the publishers of Helldivers, while Warner Brothers became the publisher of Gauntlet. The team was big enough to split into two, and each team worked on the different projects.

2014 / 2015

While working on both Helldivers and Gauntlet we recruited a few more people. At this point we now had over double the amount of employees since 2011, taking our total over 23!

Gauntlet on PC was released in the September of 2014 and the following March saw the release of Helldivers on PlayStation consoles. But we didn’t stop there! Later in 2015 we update Gauntlet and launched it on PS4. Helldivers was also released on Steam in December.

2016 +

After the hectic last year 2016 is running by at a more leisurely pace. We are just starting a new unannounced project which will be our biggest and most ambitious project to date.

Our studio has grown to around 35 employees, with plans to continue adding additional members (check out our jobs page for open positions!).

We will also be moving offices once again to a more spacious and airy environment. Who knows what else is in store next!